Bing Crosby - Christmas Classics
VANCOUVER -- This time the Vancouver Canucks recovered from a late blown lead.
Chris Higgins scored on a 2-on-1 break with 1:19 left in overtime and the Canucks beat the Phoenix Coyotes 3-2 at Rogers Arena on Friday night after they were unable to hold a two-goal lead in the third period.
Jason Garrison scored a power-play goal early in the second period and Henrik Sedin made it 2-0 with 52.1 left before intermission. But Antoine Vermette and David Moss scored just over two minutes apart midway through the third to tie the game, setting the stage for Higgins' heroics in overtime.
Higgins raced down left wing with Brad Richardson and fired a shot under the glove of goalie Mike Smith as the Canucks continued to build on a recently completed 3-1-0 road trip by winning for just the second time in seven games at home.
Roberto Luongo finished with 37 saves to for the Canucks, who moved into a tie with Phoenix in eighth place in the Western Conference. But the Coyotes, who were without captain Shane Doan, have played two fewer games than Vancouver.
Smith made 29 saves for the Coyotes, who have two wins in eight games (2-4-2) after losing the middle pair of a four-game road trip that wraps up against the Colorado Avalanche on Tuesday.
Phoenix was hoping to have top-four defenseman Zbynek Michalek back from a lower-body injury, but he missed a ninth straight game. Two other Coyotes regulars were late scratches: Doan had the flu and defenseman Derek Morris had to attend to a family matter.
Garrison opened the scoring with a power play one-timer from the point past Smith's blocker 1:26 into the second period. It was the seventh straight game the Canucks' 25th-ranked power play has scored, and their top-rated penalty kill helped build on the lead.
After holding the Coyotes' seventh-ranked power play to one shot for the second time, Vancouver doubled its lead when defenseman Ryan Stanton skated out of the penalty box and into a 3-on-2 rush with Daniel and Henrik Sedin in the final minute of the period.
Stanton lost the puck inside the blue line, then got it back in time to drop a pass to Daniel. He slid it across to Henrik, who one-timed a slap shot from the right circle off the glove of Smith and into the net.
The momentum of the shot left Henrik lying on the ice as the puck went in, appropriate since the play started with a barrel-roll shot block by the Canucks' captain on the penalty kill at the other end.
It should have been a big goal for a Canucks team that blew four third-period leads during the six-game homestand that preceded its recent road trip.
But as was the case with many of the blown leads, Vermette's goal came shortly after Vancouver failed to convert a great scoring chance. After a good save in tight by Smith, Jannik Hansen couldn't put the puck into an open net from the top of the crease off a scramble; on the same shift, Vermette wired a shot from the blue line through a screen, past Luongo's waving glove, off the crossbar and into the net.
Moss tied it with 7:05 left in the third period, parking himself atop the crease between four defenders to bang a rebound under Luongo after Mike Ribeiro worked the puck out from the behind the net.
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